Bow looking sticks they may be but it seems they get the job done. Nasty. It seems that they have really very few casualties though (considering the pretty massive size of forces in the pictures). It briefly mentions "codified, age-old traditions" and I wonder if that controls exactly how the violence is directed and stops it being a real massacre.

This is a cool photo I just found yesterday. It was taken at a amazing event three years back. There is a ultra-marathon group called Fuego y Agua, and they came up with what they call a survival race. The runners had to run 50k/100k and about every 4 miles they had to participate in survival themed activities: making a quick survival bow, starting a bow drill fire, ect. Anyway, my brother and I were some of the volunteers and to pass the time between runners we did a bunch of slinging. The runners thought it was so cool that next year they added slinging to the competitions, which unfortunately we were unable to attend. They were very crazy, and against our strong advice they used real stones ( Many of them had never slang before, it was a absolute miracle no one was hurt!!!)

They were very crazy, and against our strong advice they used real stones

people adapt quickly3 days ago some 12 year old kids watched me while slinging, after i finished i asked them if anyone wanted to try.(they didn't even know slings excisted! )the bolder one tried , i showed him the underarm , 1st try he hit the ground before releasing, 2nd try he didn't release!!! everyone stared at him i asked him "why didn't you release?""oh should i release it?"Everybody said OBVIOUSLY!

well, after a while everyone had a sling in his hands trying to throw straight2 of them got pretty close to the target many times , the other two abandoned trying probably because of the slings i gave them (one too short ,the other too long)

Well, I most certainly have trained beginners to sling with stones from the get-go, but I always hit the deck or crouch behind a tree.

The thing to consider with this situation though, is that they woke up at 3 o clock in the morning, and in order to compete they had to run in these rubber sandal kits they made themselves, so their feet were bloody from running up and down Texas' finest jagged hills and canyons. Then they swam in a frigid river for a few miles. After 8 hours of that, they participated in the slinging challenge, exhausted and very delirious, trust me on that one. (They were carrying cactus pads in their hands without removing the spines! )

Different story... a few years ago I was teaching a friendly gentleman and two 12 year old's how to sling. They had each bartered for a sling from me, and I wanted them to be able to leave that day with a relative understanding of how to sling safely. The problem was that there was only ONE tennis ball, each had to wait his turn.

One of the boys wandered off, I didn't think much of it at the time, and thought he could teach himself how to sling. He picked up the ugliest jagged stone this side of the atmosphere, put it in the sling, and began doing helicopter the way most beginners do, rigid, tense, and very fast. From what I gather, he drew his arm out as if doing jumping jacks, didn't release, and the stone skated across his scalp like a plow through a field. I heard a yell, went to see what happened and found him touching the top of his head, blood trickling down. Thankfully, there was a retired special forces medic around and he fixed him in short order.

UPDATE: I didn't like the pouch of the sling I made after testing it I found that because I didn't braid the pouch tightly it had a rough release and the strings were already fraying quite badly. So I decided to rebraid it. That didn't go well so I had to cut it in half and I improvised and used the cords to go though a leather pouch and 2 other cords to add "whipping" to each attaching side to hold them in place and burned all the strands to keep them from slipping out. Then I modified the pouch a bit and here's the end product. So now I like it better, in my opinion leather grips and releases better... but that's just what I think from my experiences.

Here's what I've been doing. That tapered release is very accurate, at least indoors with socks. I can't wait to test that out. I get all my sling materials at the dollar store They even sell river rocks.